Roots of Oral Tradition in The Arabian Nights

116 Pages·2007·1.67 MB·English

Roots of Oral Tradition in The Arabian Nights

Zaid Numan Mahir

December 2007
The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have
examined the thesis entitled
Roots of Oral Tradition in The Arabian Nights
An Application of Oral Performance Theory to
‘the Story of the King of China’s Hunchback’
Presented by Zaid N. Mahir, a candidate for the degree of Master of
Arts, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of
acceptance.

Professor John Miles Foley

Professor Joanna Hearne

Professor John Zemke
Dedication

To my late mother,
a victim of the Bush family war on Iraq.

To my beloved wife,
whose presence in my life made all the difference.
Acknowledgements

I would like to express my thanks to Professor John Miles Foley
for introducing me to Oral Tradition as an academic discipline and for
open-mindedly advising this thesis.
My thanks are also due to my father, Nu’man Mahir al-Kan’ani,
for recounting to me early in my academic upbringing the story of Abu
Zaid al-Hilali, thus furnishing the premise of this thesis.
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Table of Contents
Approval
Dedication
Acknowledgments ii
Premise 1
Chapter One 10
Theoretical Background
Chapter Two 36
Chapter Three 73
Conclusion 94
Appendix 100
Bibliography 108

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Premise
Oral Storytelling in the Arab World

The rich oral tradition in the Arab world is one of a collective
imaginary and a reflection of the collective consciousness. Tales and
stories have had a twofold purpose. On the one hand, they provide
entertainment to an audience so long accustomed to orality that they
have developed a particular taste for, and an appreciation of, verbal
imagery. On the other hand, tales respond to a variety of needs--
cultural, social, religious, etc-- that emerge constantly from the
individual’s interaction with the surroundings, as well as from the
influence of society on the individual. Tales also display concerns and
dreams shared generally by human beings and particularly by certain
communities at certain periods of time. Thus they find their echo in an
audience willing to be part of the world of the tale being orally
narrated. Moreover, tales have an educational effect in the Arab world,
and the morality emerging from such tales serves as a model of correct
behavior, not only for youth but also for adults who need to be
reassured about their disciplines and creed.
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The act of storytelling itself has played a key role in reinforcing
the multipurpose message of oral tales, giving meaning and value to
life. Traveling from one area, region, or province to another, a tale was
sometimes slightly changed to fit the taste of the new audience whose
would-be reaction, however, often was of crucial significance to the act
of storytelling itself and, therefore, had a bearing on the narrator’s
performance. As such, the same story was often told differently to an
audience of children than to an audience of adults. And heroes and
single-handed deeds of heroism, for instance, had to be adjusted to
suit a given community’s historical background; heroic protagonists
would have to belong to that community or to its historical background,
whereas the wicked and cowardly belong to other groups or regions.
In the same vein, oral storytellers would use their store of
historical names and events to develop new tales and embellish them
with all the requirements of a successful storytelling, fulfilling the
technical demands of suspense and tension, as well as boosting the
morality of tales. In his Qadhaya Sha’biya [Popular Issues] (2003),
Farouq Khawrshid stresses the continuity and significance of such a
practice among storytellers (pp. 33-43). Some of the historical names
introduced, he says, may not even have a distinguishing historical
stature, yet they acquire one particularly in popular history. Khawrshid
designates certain names that have resonance with respect to famous
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old Arabian tribes, such as the Beni Hilal tribe. Along these lines,
storytellers tend to free their heroes from the restraints of time and
place, allowing for the utilization of magical means of transportation
and travel. A hero would then be able to travel across boundaries-- on
earth, in the air, over the seas-- and consequently acquire a
supernatural quality. The general atmosphere of the tale would be one
of dream or myth, where the past and present easily merge, drawing
the audience into the world of the tale.
Fulfilling the roles of performer-entertainer and historian-narrator
simultaneously, the oral storyteller in the Arab world has done more
than merely maintain an orally founded tradition in which stories were
transmitted orally. In her article, “Oral Narrating and Performing
traditions” (2002), Deborah Folaron enumerates the fundamental
components of oral tradition (pp. 1-2); among these is the
transmission of the ‘text’ through the human medium in dialogue with
the audience. Clearly, emphasis here is not only on the dynamics of
transmission, i.e., the narrator’s performance, but also on the
interaction between narrator and audience in the light of the
performance. Traditionally, the oral storyteller “used voice to narrate a
series or sequence of events…. Dramatic or theatrical quality was
added to the narration by imitation, mimicry, impersonation and
rhetorical manipulation of language in order to create verbal imagery”
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(p. 1). As such, one might say, the storyteller has been able to shorten
the distance between himself as narrator and the audience in terms of
reception, creating a fictional space in which the auditor “was invited to
enter into a special relationship of complicity” (p. 2) where he would be
part of a shared experience. Once this entry is completed, through a
language of cultural and symbolic codes, both oral storyteller and
audience “engage in dialogue and in essence co-create a ‘text’” (p. 2).
Needless to say, the dialogue, for the most part of the narrative event,
is to be understood not in the literal sense of the word.
Interaction between the storyteller and audience may reach a
moment of emotional involvement, of empathy, on the part of the
audience with a particular character or event. Thanks to the oral
storyteller’s artistic skill that creates suspense and increases
expectation, the audience members then become exceedingly active
receivers who play a participatory role in the reception of the narration.
At once they become “‘performers’ themselves, with a certain
bargaining power in the narrative event” (Deborah Folaron: p. 2).
In this respect, we have an interesting episode that reveals the
influence the storytelling event had on the audience in Iraq, early in the
twentieth century. In a handwritten testimony (2005), Nu’man Mahir
al-Kan’ani, a well known Iraqi poet and writer, speaks of a particular
incident of which he was verifiably informed in the 1930s.
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He says:
Popular coffee shops in Baghdad used to hire a qassakhoun
(or oral storyteller) to ‘read’ tales some of which, however,
were humorous and funny. Most of the tales were about
Abu Zaid al-Hilali, al-Zeer Salim, and other heroic
characters. One night, at the suggestion of a classmate in
ninth grade, we went to a coffee shop called Dijla (or Tigris)
overlooking the great river on the al-Russafa side. Around
nine o’clock in the evening, the usual time for the reading
of tales to begin, a number of the coffee shop customers
were assembled inside, waiting for the event. The shop
owner had the chairs rearranged in three successive bow-
like rows in front of which, on the floor, he put a (wooden)
board, 3 by 2 meters approximately. That board
represented the stage. On it he put one single chair and a
small table. A few minutes later, the oral storyteller arrived,
dressed in a dishdasha (or men’s gown) and a zuboun (or
men’s outdoor robe) over it; on his head there was a
yashmagh (or men’s head scarf), worn according to a
particular fashion called ‘tcharrawiya’ common in Baghdad.
The qassakhoun was accompanied by two people: a young
boy carrying a lantern and walking in front of his master,
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